Project Love
The reason why I am interested in nonviolence is because it appears to be intertwined, at a deep sub-molecular level, with spirituality, and particularly the pragmatic, results-oriented kind of spirituality which manifests itself in literal miracles. It's annoying and awkward but there you are. Here's Agnes Sanford in 1947 in 'The Healing Light':
He had seen, for the first time, the working of that force that will eventually take the place of bombs and shells upon this earth. For as soon as enough people are able to use the power of love in such a way as to create thereby a perfect self-defense, wars will be outmoded. When one can obtain justice and right and friendly cooperation without money and without price, without bloodshed and without pain, it will no longer be sensible to fight for them.
"If an armed burglar broke into your house with intent to kill," the old question goes, "What would you do? Fight him, or lie still and let him kill your wife or child?"
Silly old question. One would do neither. One would project into the burglar's mind the love of God, by seeing him as a child of God and asking God to bless him. And if one were strong enough in faith and love, the burglar's mind would change. He would leave the family unharmed and go away.
"But hardly anyone can do that!" the answer comes.
Obviously. For if we could, we would not need to resort to war in order to defend ourselves. And we had best learn to do it, for until we do, we must suffer. Until we know the method of love and brotherhood, our choice of weak non-resistance or self-defense is only a choice of evils.
Project love. How do we go about doing that? How do you even begin to start training? What's the equivalent of basic martial arts? Are there dojos you can learn this stuff? Courses where one can practice? And what kind of politics - or metapolitics perhaps - does something like this translate into? It doesn't really map onto either Marxism, religious conservatism, libertarianism, or even law-abiding liberalism. I feel naked and alone pretty much everywhere on the political spectrum - about the only party anywhere that has nonviolence as a principle are the Greens, and some varieties of anarchist.
(This is in the context, mind you, of a practical how-to manual for literal physical healing using the power of your mind, not an abstract philosophical text. The existence of anomalous powers for healing is taken as a given.)
August 21st, 2007 - 00:49
As a Christian you are not meant to heal anybody “using the power of your mind” [Acts 3:6] Wars cease: Micah 4:1-5
August 22nd, 2007 - 19:38
“As a Christian you are not meant to heal anybody “using the power of your mindâ€? [Acts 3:6]”
You know, it makes me laugh to hear you say that and quote that story, which I read in the exact opposite way you seem to. Peter certainly isn’t healing the cripple using the power of his body. Is the Holy Spirit not a Mind? Does he not live in us who believe in Jesus? Can He be localised as a physical organ within our bodies? How then does He live in us if not in our minds? And how does He act through us if not through our minds?
Do you think that the human mind is irredeemably evil and corrupt, and that God has absolutely no way at all of communicating with us in ways we can understand? Or that when God wants to act through us there is a sort of electrical zap and we become something like God-controlled zombies with no conscious awareness of what we are doing?
Or might it be possible to consciously learn to understand and cooperate, even in our finite and limited human minds, with what the infinite and loving mind of the Father would like to do through us? Because that’s what I’d like to do, and I think it’s what Jesus wants to do.
You can use another word than ‘mind’ if you’d really like. ‘Heart’, ‘spirit’, ‘soul’. But it means the same thing, so why put up barriers to communication by using a special religious-only language?
August 22nd, 2007 - 19:43
(Replying to your comment on my Livejournal).
The quote is from the alternate ending to Terminator 2. August 29, 1997 is the nuclear war of Judgement Day in the original (pre-T3) Terminator mythos. It’s kinda a significant date to science fiction fans. Amusingly retro. It seemed so futuristic – and inevitable – in 1984 when the first Terminator movie was made.
You know, I was just talking to my coworkers about T2 and Judgement Day today, and went looking up Wikipedia to try to find out when the day was, because I’d forgotten. I knew it was in August. Then I come home and read your comment, which I had seen in my email intray but had no idea what it was about. :)
Makes me giggle, because I was just reading Rupert Sheldrake talking about telepathic awareness of emails and I was feeling left out because I didn’t think it had ever happened to me. :)
August 29, 2007 will be exactly one week from today for me.
Michael Jackson will turn 50.
Ten years ago, here in Christchurch, there was a big rave party on August 29, 1997 in honour of the date. Wonder if there’ll be one this year. Wednesday’s kind of an awkward day for it to fall on though.
August 23rd, 2007 - 00:51
I know a NAME that dispels the pow’r of evil, I know a NAME that can break the tempter’s snare. I know a NAME that unlocks the gate of heaven, when through ITS merits I go to God in pray’r. I know a NAME, a wonderful NAME, that wonderful NAME is JESUS. Whatsoever you shall ask in MY NAME, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in my NAME, I will do it. John 14:13,14. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none,; but such as I have give I thee: IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH rise up and walk. {What Peter has is the NAME OF JESUS} {Then Peter tells the people, that it was not his own power or holiness that healed the man:} Ye,men of Israel, why marvel ye at this, or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.. hath glorified his Son Jesus…And HIS NAME THROUGH FAITH IN HIS NAME {faith of the one who wants the healing, I understand} has made this man strong.., yea, the FAITH WHICH IS BY HIM has given him this perfect soundness… [Acts 3: 6,12, 13, 16]
August 23rd, 2007 - 22:47
It looks like project love is not going away so I might add something very ungeneration-x-ish I came across while looking for a certain keepsake from the past: O the deep,deep love of Jesus, vast unmeasured, boundless, free; Rolling as a mighty ocean In its fulness over me. Underneath me, all around me, Is the current of Thy love;Leading onward, leading homeward, To my glorious rest above. O the deep, deep love of Jesus, Spread His praise from shore to shore; How He loveth, ever loveth, Changeth never, never-more; How He watches o’er His loved ones, Died to call them all His own; How for them He intercedeth, Watches o’er them from the throne. O the deep, deep love of Jesus, Love of evry love the best; ‘Tis an ocean vast of blessing, ‘Tis a haven sweet of rest. O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ‘Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me; And it lifts me up to glory, For it lifts me up to Thee.
August 24th, 2007 - 21:56
Heh, I remember that hymn too. It’s a good one.
August 24th, 2007 - 22:32
I would like to ask you: what is it that you understand that is meant by ‘the name of Jesus’?
Is it a literal word? The five letters J-E-S-U-S? (Which is an Anglicisation of what was probably Yeshua, or Joshua, in the original Hebrew? Except that it would have been Aramaic, or Koine Greek?) Is it a specific pattern of sound waves in air, ink on paper, or photons on a screen?
Do you think God is a machine moved by symbol manipulation? Do we use ‘in the name of JESUS!’ as a magical incantation? Is power absent from us when those two Latin syllables are not on our lips? Does the sign of the cross or the fish contain the Most High?
What do you make of ‘Lord, Lord, have we not done all these mighty works in your name? But he shall say to them, depart from me, I never knew you?’ Or ‘Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?’ Or ‘The gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power’?
What do you make of ‘In God We Trust’ engraved in the coins of America in 1864, as Christians killed Christians in the Civil War, singing ‘I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel’ and ‘Glory glory hallelujah’? Or ‘Gott Mitt Uns’ inscribed on the belt buckles of German Army soldiers in WW2? Do you think the display of sacred Christian phrases in political discourse held any power in history to turn back the night, when it was also allied to sword and gun and fire?
I do believe that there is spiritual power in symbol, word and ritual, when combined with faith and right intention. And a name is one way of picking a person out of a crowd, and if that is all we have and we mean it honestly then God will honour it. But one of the heresies of Christianity – Protestantism particularly – has been to place faith in symbols and strings of letters rather than in what they point toward. I grew up in a church that placed J-E-S-U-S prominently over its steeple, while disobeying his commands. God is not a symbol, and Jesus is not a name.
A question I asked myself long ago, and still do, is this: if I were in a foreign country, and I knew no words, and there were no name by which I might know Jesus – by what feature would I recognise him?
August 24th, 2007 - 23:37
Obviously God knows a language or two, but to make sure everybody else gets the message also, I guess Peter added ‘of Nazareth’. Otherwise Phil.:2:10